Vomitorium Watch

Alas … after going over a year without catching an example of the egregious misuse of the word, Will Self in an opeddish thing in BBC Magazine (of all places):

For what I think we require, as a society, is some sort of collective vomitorium. Not, you appreciate, that I expect you – like those mythical Roman patricians – to void the contents of your stomachs then limp groaning back to the dinner table.

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3 thoughts on “Vomitorium Watch”

I wonder if “mythical Roman patricians” wasn’t meant to imply that the whole scenario was mythical? At any rate, when I first saw it, the piece had a “The myth of the Roman vomitorium” inset, explaining what the word actual means (at Macrobius, Saturnalia 6.4.3), which tends to support that view.

rogueclassicism: 1. n. an abnormal state or condition resulting from the forced migration from a lengthy Classical education into a profoundly unClassical world; 2. n. a blog about Ancient Greece and Rome compiled by one so afflicted (v. "rogueclassicist"); 3. n. a Classics blog.